


Love Me, Love Me Not

by whysosirius200



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Death, Eventual Johnlock, Florist AU, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Pining Sherlock, There's gonna be some cameos, Unrequited Love, Violence, WIP, all that jazz, but also flower shop sassiness, but only at first!!!, cases, flowershop au, idk really, it's gonna be pretty great, or maybe pining john, probably going to be, unestablished
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:43:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3787063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whysosirius200/pseuds/whysosirius200
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If you’re going to be wandering around without direction, then this isn’t the shop for you.” The new voice forced the woman’s head up with a quick snap, allowing a few strawberry blonde strands the chance to tumble down from her back to just in front of her lapels, and her eyes darted from left to right with the frenzy of a panicked animal before they settled on the owner of the voice. She sighed and placed a hand over her heart as the male figure descended the steps against the back wall, but the weight of his words soon hit her, and she stared at him with a pink-painted lip curled in confusion. </p><p>"Excuse me?"</p><p>"You know perfectly well what I said; don't make me repeat myself," the man quipped back as he took a spot behind the counter, and with a flick of his wrist, readied a newspaper that had been sitting there for reading.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Me, Love Me Not

**Author's Note:**

> Oh gosh, okay! This is my debut fic, and I have no idea where I'm going with this! I have a few vague ideas, but eeehhhhhh :s
> 
> Anyway, I live off comments, so if you like the first chapter, please, kudos or leave a comment! That tells me to produce more chapters and will boost my butt into gear! *hearts*
> 
> Anyhoo, thank you for giving this fic a chance to spread its wings, those that are reading this!

It was a still, rainy day like any other in the overburdened city of London. Water, thick with pollution and smog and the after effects of human civilization, thundered down from the sky in its relentless effort to erode away the rock and brick and stone of the city and the warm, kindred souls of its inhabitants. It bounced from leaf to leaf, to leaf, to grass, and seeped into the earth, where it planned to feed the plant life that so desperately tried to cling to any chance of survival there. It was there in the city of London that the rain sang its frozen litany to the ears of vehicles and buildings, and to the occasional human that dared to venture into the downpour. No wind brushed over the rooftops, leaving the rain by itself to terrorize the cityscape with its usual, irksome platter. 

Tap, tap tap, tap- the sound of heels on pavement could just barely be heard from over the echo of the rain, and against the soaked russet of brick buildings strode a raincoat and heels, pink in contrast to the silver blanket of clouds above or the shade of the storefronts and flats to her left. She walked with intent, with a purpose, the woman in pink, and it was for several minutes that she walked with nothing but the rain, a pink rolling case, and a matching umbrella, unfolded and aimed at the sky, to accompany her. She only came to a stop when her destination popped into view: a small shop with a red overhang and ancient wood paneling, and rows upon rows of flowers crowding the glass panels of windows. Roses, lilies, violets, hydrangeas- a rainbow of petals and stems and even vases already could be seen from just a quick peer inside, and with a tilting up of her chin, the woman pushed aside the door and escaped the hush of London’s watery needles. 

The interior of the building was just as the window had implied it would be- filled to the absolute brim with flowers in buckets and labels, each arranged in what seemed to be chaos and disarray. Isles were a concept not implemented here, and instead, the owner of the shop had decided upon the madness of pushing different flowers onto shelves in separate corners, and in the very center of the floor was yet another bushel of pails and laminated nametags written in handwriting that made the woman squint and forced her brows into a furrow. The scrawling loops and dots were something that not even a doctor could understand, let alone a simple woman in a pink raincoat who was dripping onto a bristled doormat at the front of the shop, but the sneaking suspicion wriggled in her mind that even if the scratches of ink were legible, they would create words far past her own understanding, and so she simply thanked the stars that the labels were an eyestrain so she wouldn’t make as much of a fool of herself than if she had tried to pronounce whatever it was that were in the labels to begin with. 

With a quick scan, the woman could already tell that the owner was nowhere to be found, and thus took it upon herself to fold her umbrella back into the portable, forearm length item it had been prior to the storm and stowed it in her bag before she drifted around the shop in a sort of lost haze. The wheels of her briefcase rolled and her heels clacked against the checkered tiles of the floor in a sort of eerie silence as she stepped, one foot deliberately placed in front of the other after the first had done the same. Her gaze was captured by the myriad of blooms that littered the shop, from the small to the large, the short and squat to the thin and stringy and every other type of petal in between. Summer flowers, spring flowers, fall and winter flowers- even those that grew and prospered year round were collected and set into the buckets before her in the shorn remains of what could only be the royal botanical garden. 

“If you’re going to be wandering around without direction, then this isn’t the shop for you.” The new voice forced the woman’s head up with a quick snap, allowing a few strawberry blonde strands the chance to tumble down from her back to just in front of her lapels, and her eyes darted from left to right with the frenzy of a panicked animal before they settled on the owner of the voice. She sighed and placed a hand over her heart as the male figure descended the steps against the back wall, but the weight of his words soon hit her, and she stared at him with a pink-painted lip curled in confusion. 

"Excuse me?"

"You know perfectly well what I said; don't make me repeat myself," the man quipped back as he took a spot behind the counter, and with a flick of his wrist, readied a newspaper that had been sitting there for reading. The woman scrunched her lips with a sharp exhale and tapped her way to the front counter, and was about to slam her hands down when she hesitated, took a deep breath, and donned a false smile. 

"I'll just be taking a bouquet of, er," She waved her hand in indecision, and with a sigh, pointed to one of the buckets containing several six-petaled flowers with a vibrant orange hue on each one, "Some of those. A dozen."

"No you won't." The man turned a page in the newspaper with an indifferent mien. The woman was gaping at him with an incredulous expression. 

"Yes I wi-"

"No, you won't," He repeated, then lowered the newspaper and stared at her for a few solid, time-stilling seconds. It was in these moments that the woman saw calculation in his eyes, cold and unforgiving and so heartlessly brutal, as if she were being judged for every wrong doing she had committed in her life, but there was no possible way for this stranger to be aware of her lies and dishonesty, of her vices and sins. Despite knowing this, reason evaded her, and she continued to fear for her sanity as the man opened his mouth to speak again. "Crimson roses- proper for mourning. You may as well toss in a few pink carnations. Unorthodox for a funeral, yes, but amidst whatever unimaginative bouquets of lilies are sure to be there, yours will pop, and you do just love to make a statement. Don’t you?"

The woman was beside herself. Her lips were parted in the beginnings of a statement, yet as he got up and strode to the bucket of roses, she shouldn’t bring herself to speak. Was this man a stalker? No, no, she had just gotten into town; there was no way this man knew of her. So how..? 

The owner approached the counter once again with a neatly wrapped bouquet of the promised flowers and set them down on a stand so he could ring up the price and allow her to pay. Recovering from her shock, the woman found herself angry. Angry at how this stranger could so easily rip her apart with nothing more than his eyes, furious at how he seemed to pass over the mentioning of her brother’s funeral with such nonchalance-- no, there was a smirk there, and she saw it so clearly in the crinkles of his eyes and the twist of his lips. It was a proud expression, not of her but of himself, but as she blinked it disappeared, leaving the facade of expressionlessness to cover the shadow of his sneering, and this utterly enraged her. Blood was boiling- how could this man know so much about her and still be so snide and rude? 

She almost considered not paying, just to spite him. A part of her rejected the notion of getting arrested for theft, a part of her brain that she found herself listening to religiously, and so with a frown fueled by smoldering distaste and aggression, she swiped her card, grabbed the bouquet, and rushed out of the store with murder in her eyes. 

Once outside, the woman allowed herself to relax under the red of the awning over her. Why had she gotten so angry? Perhaps it was the grief? Yes, of course- the grief. She could feel her head throb in the beginnings of a headache, and she felt the need to just go home, or more realistically, to her hotel. However, it was just over an hour away walking, and she didn’t want to deal with the crowds that would surely be pouring into and out of the metro stations or the shared spaces of the buses. Cab it was, then. 

She snatched her umbrella from her bag and pushed the button that unfolded it, set it on her shoulder with the hand holding the bouquet, and strode the few steps to the sidewalk with the intention of hailing a cab. It only took a few suspicious seconds for one to pull up in front of her, and as she got inside, she barked the address of her hotel and closed her eyes. The cab started to move, but when she opened her eyes, the woman couldn’t help but notice that they were going west, when her hotel was in the east. 

 

“You’re going the wrong way,” She tried to point out to the cabbie, but all he did was smile at her in the rear view mirror and keep driving. 

“I know. I just want to talk to you is all.”


End file.
